Moving Forward
by Guinevere137
Summary: The house he grew up in remained empty.


The house he grew up in remained empty.

After his father died, he found excuses to stay out of it. He built his mother a one-story, sprawling home next to the stables with a yard big enough for children and dragons to play in. For most of his engagement, and a few months after his marriage, he stayed there.

The house he built with his wife was in the middle of the village.

There used to be...something there, but when became apparent to most of the village that he was no longer living in his childhood home, Gobber and his friends took it upon themselves to draw up plans for a new place. The blueprints were their wedding gift to him and Astrid.

The two of them got married at the tail-end of the summer, and their new home was ready just in time for winter. It was a two-story, with three bedrooms: two upstairs, and one downstairs. A small loft upstairs was dedicated to his and Astrid's work. The doors to the bedrooms were just off the loft, making checking on future children a simpler task.

The kitchen had huge, front-facing windows and curtains hand-made by Astrid's mother. The fireplace was perfect and the stairs were small and easy to climb with only one good leg. Windows littered the rooms both up and downstairs, and the sunlight gave the house a roomy, open feeling.

The master bedroom was downstairs, something he wasn't initially a fan of. His father's bedroom had always been downstairs, and he'd therefore been afraid he'd associate the two rooms with one another. But his and Astrid's room was slightly larger, with a place for Toothless to lay in the corner, and a window large enough for a Nadder head to peak through. A tiny fireplace sat in the corner, attached to the one in the kitchen so there was only one chimney needed. Valka had found and placed his tiny toy dragon on its mantle at some point. The sight of it made him smile.

All in all, his new house could quite easily turn into a home, and it wasn't long before it did.

With winter in full swing, there wasn't much to do save spend time with family and hide under covers seeking warmth. With their house being the largest and closest to literally everyone, it soon became a hub of activity, with at least two of three Terrible Terrors and one or two visitors over for dinner and mead every night. More than once, Cloudjumper had to come sniffing around some time near dawn in search of his rider, sticking an owl-like eye in the kitchen window. And more than once, Gobber passed out—drunk—in a chair by the fireplace.

Still, in the daytime they were left alone, and a week after Snoggletog he was given something to do: build the cradle for their newest family member. He had to have it done by summer. He had it done in a week.

It was only then did he visit his childhood home.

The snow in the surrounding area was absolutely perfect, completely and utterly undisturbed. The house itself had sat, freezing and gathering dust, also undisturbed since before his father's death. If one ignored the thin layer of dust everywhere and the eerie stillness in the air, they could have believed that Stoick the Vast would come barging through the door any minute.

But one couldn't ignore those things, and he didn't.

Instead, the rooms remained strangely silent, paused forever in time, waiting for their master to come back to them. The house had only been standing for seven years, built after a dragon raid a year before he shot down Toothless. Still, it held most of his best memories in it, and he wouldn't have it any other way. In his grief he'd decided to close up the house without looking through it, but now he must. It had things he needed.

He went straight upstairs and gathered the items in question. A childhood blanket, shockingly still around. Blueprints and ideas for inventions. Paperwork for the Academy. Various odds and ends here and there. He put them in the basket he'd brought with them and brought them downstairs.

He went to his father's room.

There, he found his father's spare cloak, which still smelled like him, and the blanket from the bed. That's all he needed. He closed the room and left the house.

It was with grief and sadness that he left the house untouched for so long, but it was with calm and anticipation that he closed the door behind him. The house held his best memories, yes, but it was only one chapter of his life, one that was now finished. He had a new home now, and a new chapter to start, and new memories to make.

And so the house he grew up in remained empty.


End file.
